‘I’d had two promotions in under a year, two pay rises, I felt there was a real opportunity to grow,’ says Sinead, 33, a marketing manager from London, ‘but as soon as I announced I was pregnant that completely changed overnight, I lost my job within three weeks.’
Sinead was a retail manager at a small chain of independent stores for a year before she fell pregnant. Already managing two stores, she was orchestrating the opening of a third when her boss unceremoniously sacked her on the pavement outside her work.
‘I had developed hyperemesis – extreme morning sickness – and was hospitalised for dehydration. Because it was my first pregnancy and I was still in my first trimester, I was told to stay in for observation because my heart rate, blood pressure and my baby’s heart rate were all up.’
Unaware of how long she would need to be observed, she told her boss she was in hospital for a pregnancy-related illness and would give him more information as soon as she was released. In less than 24 hours, she was discharged and went straight to work from the hospital. ‘Within 10 minutes of returning back to work I was dismissed, right outside the store, in front of my staff and passing public,’ she says, ‘it was a non-negotiable sacking, just “you didn’t let us know you were going to have a day off therefore you cannot work for us anymore” and that was that.’
Pregnant and jobless, Sinead was forced to declare herself unemployed and sign on to job seeker's allowance, and she would go on to apply for eight jobs a week until she gave birth. All the while, she was pursuing a court case against her completely illegal sacking, something that took a year to be resolved. Her story is the stark reality for unemployed pregnant women in the UK, beholden to a system that offers them no flexibility or emotional support.
According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 54,000 women a year are pushed out of their jobs due to pregnancy or maternity leave. And after having faced pregnancy discrimination, they are then forced to hunt for jobs that they will likely never get.
‘At my first interview at the job centre, I was told you have to sign on, you have to go for job interviews but realistically you’re not going to be offered a job,’ Sinead said, ‘they were like “this is a stupid system”, because it makes no sense for a heavily pregnant woman to be walking to a job centre every week, applying for eight jobs a week minimum, go to interviews all over where you live knowing you’re not going to get the job.’
Despite awareness even from within that this system is not only ineffective but hugely inappropriate for pregnant women, those are the rules women are made to follow if they’re unemployed and pregnant.
One interview sticks out in Sinead’s mind, she was put up for a waitressing position at a pub by the job centre. The shifts were 12 hours long, five days a week, and she was seven and a half months pregnant at the time.
‘I walked into the interview and I was looked up and down by the person interviewing me, I could just see the pity in their face,’ she said, ‘how unfortunate my life must be to be going for a job at seven months pregnant, for minimum wage too.
‘I sat down and he was really upfront and said “this is not going to work out for you, I wouldn't feel comfortable with you doing the work we'd need you to do, which is long hours on your feet, and we'd only have you for a couple of months and then we'd have to pay for you to have maternity leave and get someone to cover you”’
Sinead describes this moment as ‘hitting rock bottom.' She was on job seeker's allowance for 12 weeks in total, which amounts to a minimum of 96 job applications from being illegally fired to giving birth.
‘Every single job I went for I was overqualified for, or it was on the same pay grade and level of management as I was previously,’ she says, ‘but the jobs I got interviewed for were jobs I was doing 10 years prior as a teenager like bartending and pot-washing… I actually felt like I was losing my mind, like I’d gone back 10 years but I was also going to have a baby to look after and support.’
Advised by the job centre to go for short term contracts as this would increase the likelihood of employment, the majority of jobs she was forced to apply for were outside of the career she was previously thriving in. ‘I’d done those jobs when I was 16,’ she continued, ‘so why should I go and compete with a school leaver when I’ve worked for 10 years to build myself a career? Why am I only being offered low skilled and low paid jobs because I’m pregnant?’
It’s an inefficient system, and while the Department for Work and Pensions offered to look into Sinead’s case, she is just one of thousands of women who face pregnancy discrimination every day. This is not an isolated incident, she is just one voice speaking out against pregnancy discrimination that permeates our entire working culture.
‘It is painfully obvious that employers will avoid hiring a pregnant woman, no matter how qualified she might be for the role,’ says Joeli Brearley, founder of the Pregnant Then Screwed campaign against pregnancy and maternity discrimination, ‘It is illegal to not hire a woman because she is pregnant but proving this is why you didn’t get the job is very difficult, demonstrated by the fact that not a single case has been taken to court.’
For activists like Joeli, it’s important to change the law to stop employers from being able to ask if a woman is pregnant or plans to be in interviews, but with employers able to get around this with a simple series of more nuanced questions, it’s also imperative to attack the culture that has made pregnancy discrimination so widespread.
‘By dealing with the underlying issues which encourage employers to discriminate we will create a cultural and societal shift in the way women are viewed by our labour market,’ she continued, ‘if fathers were offered ring fenced paternity leave paid at 90% of their salary, we would see more men take time out to care for their children. Other countries, such as Iceland and Sweden, have demonstrated that this makes an enormous difference to the number of women in work and discrimination reduces as a result.
‘We also need flexible working to be adopted by all companies and for all employees,’ she said, ‘and finally, we need universal free childcare so that women can afford to return to work, if they so choose, after they have had a baby.’
Whether or not these policies will come into force remains to be seen, when we reached out to the Department for Business for a comment on the procedures in place to support pregnant women securing employment, they made the following statement:
'The law is absolutely clear – discriminating against women in the workplace because they are pregnant or new mothers is unlawful.
'Jobcentres provide tailored support from a dedicated work coach who considers an individual’s specific circumstances and how best to support them in to work. This may include advice on the support available with childcare costs or help with finding a job with flexible working that fits around parenting commitments.
'We are working with ACAS, which published updated guidance in November, to ensure that women and employers understand their rights and obligations and we continue to support the Equality & Human Rights Commission’s work on pregnancy and maternity discrimination.'
In the meantime, many women are currently facing the same battle Sinead did, with long term impacts on their physical and mental health. Sinead feels she not only had her pregnancy ruined as she spent a year extremely stressed about finding work and suing her boss – who was so incessant on proving his innocence that he harassed and stalked her – but she believes the stress of the situation contributed to her traumatic '72-hour failed labour', which ended in an emergency C-section.
‘I think my baby was born early because my body just couldn’t deal with a pregnancy and the stress and my blood pressure and the panic attacks’, she said, with her panic attacks in particular starting during this harrowing period of her life. Both her physical and mental health scarred by the experience, she estimates it took seven years for her life to get back to normal, only addressing the suppressed trauma after the birth of her second son and working through it in the three years since then.
‘Kids have an amazing ability of making you feel like it’s all worthwhile,’ she said, and while Sinead’s story ultimately had a happy ending, she won her court case against her former boss and is now working in a job she loves, she is living proof that pregnancy discrimination has an untold impact on women’s lives and should no longer be tolerated.
To learn more about your rights during pregnancy and join the fight against pregnancy discrimination, visit Pregnant Then Screwed.